As the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues with large-scale and long-term lockdowns on major cities, mass incarceration in quarantine camps and on university and college campuses, coupled with blanket digital surveillance and control over people’s movements, some signs of mass discontent have begun to emerge. Shanghai entrepreneurs called in a May 30 open letter for the
As Shanghai residents celebrated a partial end to a weeks-long, grueling city-wide lockdown, calls emerged on Wednesday for industrial action by businesses in the city to protest Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s zero-COVID policy. As the Shanghai city government claimed the city’s lockdown had lifted despite multiple barriers to movement around the city, an open letter calling on
Police officers, neighborhood committee members and community volunteers dressed in head-to-toe white PPE have been a ubiquitous feature of China’s zero-COVID policy, often shown on social media video uploads surrounding people, beating and dragging them away, or knocking on their door to put pressure on them to submit to a PCR test, to leave home
Chinese censors have deleted a social media post from a university professor who hit out at the blanket surveillance deployed against Chinese citizens as part of the zero-COVID policy. The post from Tsinghua University law professor Lao Dongyan, who has long been a vocal critic of mass surveillance and facial recognition under the ruling Chinese
Authorities in Beijing are ramping up COVID-19 restrictions, while some residents of Shanghai said they were able to leave their apartments on brief trips outside on Friday. Much of Chaoyang district in the eastern part of the Chinese capital was under lockdown on Friday, while 100 subway stations and 24 administrative districts in Fangshan district were locked
Residents of Shanghai have been reporting their city government to a national fraud hotline after claims of fully stocked, open supermarkets and eateries were posted by a ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) newspaper. Shanghai officials say the city has been free from any new COVID-19 infections for four days straight, as some shops have been
Ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) censors rushed to delete comments by the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) criticizing its zero-COVID policy as unsustainable from social media platforms in China on Wednesday. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called on China to change its approach, saying CCP leader Xi Jinping’s favored policy “will not be sustainable”
Shanghai-based rights activist Ji Xiaolong, who was recently released on bail by police, vowed on Tuesday to keep speaking out against rights abuses in the city, much of which remains under tight restrictions amid renewed rounds of mass testing. Ji, who was incommunicado for two days after tweeting “The police are here looking for me” on Saturday. He
Government censors have banned the son of Dalian Wanda billionaire tycoon Wang Jianlin from posting on a major social media platform after he cast aspersions on a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) formula currently being distributed to homes around the country to treat COVID-19, state media reported. Online influencer Wang Sicong was banned for life from
Authorities in Shanghai on Friday warned the city’s 26 million residents not to post ‘rumors’ online amid growing public anger over food shortages amid a citywide COVID-19 lockdown. “The Cyberspace Administration of the municipal [ruling Chinese Communist] Party Committee reminds social media group chat members and moderators that … it is especially necessary in the current situation
